The indignity of being sold

 My wife Denise with a red lace chemise thrown over her shoulders. (Watercolour 18' x 25")

Four months ago my post What price can be placed on a love affair touched upon my reluctance to part with paintings. The painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler had a similar evasion and referred to it as: "The indignity of being sold".

The painting that opens this post may have avoided the same indignity. I am always at a loss when the first thing a visitor asks on viewing a painting, is the price. In recent years so few of my paintings have sold that I haven't paid attention to prices. In the days when my studio was based in the Virgin Island, virtually all of my paintings sold. Since then, I consider that my work has developed immeasurably. My run-of-the-mill palm fringed beach scenes have been replaced with the subtle beauty of my Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. You might add, as I'll soon reach octogenarian status the adage: "No artist can earn a living until he is dead." may begin to attract speculative buyers.

But be that as it may, I took the average price of a painting from my Virgin Island days in the 1980's and adjusted it for inflation; no more, no less. Perhaps the figure, albeit reasonable, took the potential buyer aback! 

But there are occasions when I do take pleasure in selling a painting. My first one-man show in the 1970's was a sellout, but it was the love of the paintings rather than the price tag that motivated sales. One elderly couple asked if I could reserve the painting they liked until they returned the next day. They did return carrying the price of the painting in a shopping bag. The money had been saved over the years beneath their mattress for "something special".

A painting from my 1971 exhibition Lynn and Locality.

 

Transmuting banality into beauty

A detail from the painting shown below.

John White, in his book on the jazz singer Billie Holiday (Billie Holiday, Her Life and Times) writes in reference to her interpretation of the hackneyed lyrics of songs: 

Her supreme achievement was to transmute banality into beauty, the trite into the profound.

Here she is singing, Fine and Mellow.

My watercolours of the nude attempt the same: they express the challenges and passions involved when working from the live model.  The laboured definitive is replaced by capturing in seconds what I see at fleeting glance. Risk is involved and risk may become risqué, but never repetitive and dull, as I find are so many paintings and photographs of the nude.

Annabelle. (16" x 24" and captured from life 20 minutes)

Improvising in A2 sharp

The derilict organ in All Souls Church, Halifax, Yorkshire.

The organ dates from 1868 and my sketch was made in 2001.

Work on the piano that I began restoring over two months ago is nearing completion. It entered my workshop in a similar depressed state as the church organ in the opening sketch. Had I known in advance the extent of the damage caused by rats, woodworm and ravages of the Caribbean climate, I doubt that I would have attempted the task. Thankfully, the invaders stopped short at the sound board, otherwise all would have been lost, and neither could they get their teeth into the cast iron frame.

The following pictures give an indication of what I was up against.

The original guide and balance pin rails. 

This I remade from scratch with pins spaced to a tolerance of 0.010".

Guide pin rail eaten away by woodworm. 

Keys eaten away by rats.

There are no replacement piano parts available on a small island in the Caribbean. To that I might add: "period". Importing items from overseas is expensive and time comsuming, hence the need for self sufficiency, skill and improvisation. These requirements included making a machine for winding replacement single and double wound bass strings. The inner steel piano wire I had to import but the copper windings were recycled from the old strings and electric motor armatures. A disused two speed washing motor provided the exact copper wire diameter for A2 sharp. My "Made in Dominica" strings tune to a "good enough" tone and pitch.

Below is the piano with work on restoration almost complete. 

Faded Photographs

Photographic prints from long ago fade faster than the memories they captured. Nevertheless, they survive better than those saved on crashed computer hard drives. While sorting through boxes of survivals I came across one the launching of my boat Born Free in 1980 and another of a portrait bust from the year 2000.

The building of Born Free was every bit a work of art as the sculpting of the portrait bust.